File:Evolution and disease (1890) (14577387710).jpg

Identifier: evolutiondisease00blan (find matches)
Title: Evolution and disease
Year: 1890 (1890s)
Authors: Bland-Sutton, John, Sir, 1855-1936
Subjects: Diseases Medical genetics Abnormalities, Human Animals Disease Congenital Abnormalities
Publisher: New York : Scribner & Welford
Contributing Library: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Harvard Medical School

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uggested that the short-legged spitze or Dachshund is possibly cretinous. Thishowever is problematical ; the spitze must be a veryold variety of dog. Dr. Blackmore showed me in theSalisbury museum some arm bones which clearlybelonged to a dog, and they were curved, or bowed likethe bones of a spitze ; the curves were certainly not dueto rickety changes. These bones were obtained amongothers from excavations made in investigating the pit-dwellings, admirable models of which are exhibited irthe same museum. Dr. Parrot has made a careful study of cretinism5and allied diseases of the skeletons, and goes so far asto believe that the ancient Egyptians were acquaintedwith cretinism, and even had a cretinous god, Ptah,which was particularly venerated at Memphis. An 264 EVOLUTION AND DISEASE. examination of the models and figures of this godpreserved in the Egyptian galleries of the BritishMuseum shows, that in some of the figures Ptah isrepresented as a big-bellied, squat divinity, with short
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Fig. 129.—The Egyptian God Ptah. limbs, not unlike a cretin (fig. 129), in others he isrepresented as of noble figure, the type of lordly bear-ing and majesty. The notion that the dwarf models ofPtah represent cretins is very speculative and improb-able. ZOOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION 01 DISEASE. 265 Cretinism has a wider distribution, geographically andzoologically, than we were aware even twenty years ago,and it is not unreasonable to suppose that carefulinquiry will show that many other similar diseases,supposed to be rare or confined to certain districts, areas a matter of fact commoner than we suspect. Rickets is another example of a disease having awide zoological distribution. The leading charactersof rickets are, undue softness of bone in young animals,associated with catarrh of the stomach and intestines,depending upon, or induced by, unsuitable food andunfavourable surroundings. The softness of the dif-ferent parts of the skeleton gives rise to a complicatedseries of deformities,

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